Amherst College - Henry Steele Commagerhttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/1011
enA Piler, Not a Filerhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2008_winter/collegerow/commager/node/54812
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Eric Goldscheider</span></p><table border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><img src="/media/view/39697/original/commager.jpg" border="0" alt="Commager" title="Commager" width="400" height="268"></div><div class="fine-print">Henry Steele Commager. "Filing," explained his widow this past fall, </div><div class="fine-print">"was not his long suit." </div> </td></tr></tbody></table><p><br><span class="drop-cap2"> H</span>enry Steele Commager was a renowned historian, a revered teacher and a prolific writer. But Commager, who taught at Amherst for 36 years, beginning in 1956, and who died in 1998, was perhaps most proud of his role as public intellectual. He was not afraid to mix it up on the burning issues of his day. So it is fitting that Commager’s papers are available for all to read.<br><br> This past fall brought the end to a year-long project at Amherst, led by freelance archivist Anne Ostendarp, to bring order to the often chaotic reams of correspondence, notes, itineraries and manuscripts left after a long career marked by extraordinary intellectual energy. The Henry Steele Commager Papers are accessible to the public in the college’s Archives and Special Collections. To celebrate the project’s completion, a symposium held on campus in the fall brought together colleagues, friends and former students to share their Commager stories.<br><br> As his widow, Mary Powlesland Commager, told those gathered, the effort to collect and preserve the papers came with some technical challenges: “Filing,” she explained, “was not his long suit—piling was; he was a great piler.”<br><br> Commager’s esoteric approach to organization notwithstanding, the trove now neatly catalogued includes exchanges of personal letters with the famous (Senator J. William Fulbright and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, to name two) and with ordinary people.<br><br> A Pittsburgh native, Commager arrived in Amherst after co-authoring The Growth of the American Republic, a 1930 textbook once widely used in high schools and colleges around the country. Milton Cantor, professor emeritus of history at UMass Amherst, was a graduate student of Commager’s at Columbia University. Cantor believes that Commager’s most important contribution to American letters was in the area of freedom. “He was always a vigilant guardian of civil liberties,” Cantor says, “and a very articulate spokesman whenever the government engaged in particularly nasty business that he felt was a violation of the First or the Fourth or the Fifth or the Seventh or the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. He was always in the newspapers and the magazines.”<br><br> Commager spoke out against Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusades, was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and was an early advocate for impeaching President Nixon.<br><br> Wyatt Haskell ’61, a student of Commager’s at Amherst, helped raise the funds to hire Ostendarp. Haskell earned pocket money in college by driving Commager to the airport for speaking engagements. They developed an enduring friendship. Haskell is pleased to note that among the 84 linear feet of materials that now make up the collection, his own letters to the professor account for half an inch or so.</p><p class="fine-print">Photo courtesy of the Amherst College Office of Public Affairs. </p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1011">Henry Steele Commager</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1022">Henry Steele Commager Project</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1568">Amherst College Archives</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7052">Anne Ostendarp</a></div></div></div>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:59:56 +0000kdduke54812 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2008_winter/collegerow/commager/node/54812#commentsHenry Steele Commager: Celebrating One of Amherst’s Legendshttps://www.amherst.edu/news/multimedia/events/2007/node/26525
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span>On Saturday, Oct. 27, at 3 p.m. in Pruyne Auditorium (Fayerweather 115), Amherst College honored the life and career of one of America’s most important historians and teachers with a symposium on “Henry Steele Commager: Celebrating One of Amherst’s Legends.” Featuring prominent historians, lawyers and others who knew Commager well, the event marks the end of a year-long special project by the Amherst College Library’s Archives and Special Collections to arrange and describe Commager’s papers, making them available for the public.</span></p><p><span class="inline"><img class="image thumbnail" src="/media/view/15018/thumbnail/audio_icon_660066.gif" border="0" alt="audio" title="audio" width="18" height="15"></span> <a href="http://www.amherst.edu/media/events/2007_10_27_commager/commager_symposium2.mp3">Hear a full audio recording (MP3 format) of the Commager Symposium</a> <br /><div style="position: relative; display: block; max-width: 300px">
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>The Oct. 27 Amherst College symposium featured:</span></p> <ul><li class="MsoNormal"><span>William Alford ’70, the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, vice dean for the graduate program and international legal studies, and director of East Asian legal studies at Harvard University. He will give an intellectual portrait of Commager.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Hugh Hawkins, the Anson D. Morse Professor of History and American Studies, Emeritus at Amherst College. He will discuss Commager as colleague. </span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Robert W. Hawkins ’71, a partner at the Washington, D.C. office of Hunton &amp; Williams and a specialist in international commercial arbitration. He will reflect on Commager as mentor. </span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Milton Cantor, professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He will discuss Commager and McCarthyism. </span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span>Mary Powlesland Commager, Latin American historian and Commager’s widow.<br></span></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1011">Henry Steele Commager</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4616">events multimedia</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5194">Commager Symposium</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5529">commager</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5530">audio</a></div></div></div>Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:51:16 +0000samasinter26525 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/news/multimedia/events/2007/node/26525#comments